


exercises in sacrifice

by trellomonkey



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: 5+1, Angst, Character Study, M/M, i feel like a wild baboon i can't believe jack is a Real Gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-06 23:51:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17354999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trellomonkey/pseuds/trellomonkey
Summary: How selfish it would be for Vincent to deprive the world of him.(Five times Vincent says goodbye, and one time he doesn't.)





	exercises in sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> find me outside michael chu's house banging on the walls for more lore.
> 
> idk why i made this specific choice for vincent but i imagined him as a doctor so in the beginning here he's a pharmacist's apprentice.

Vincent says goodbye mere minutes after they meet.

Bloomington is a rather insular community. Sure, the omniums brought with them an advent of economic and infrastructural reform that ushered much of America into a technological tomorrow, following in the footsteps of places like Numbani and Oasis, but still, Vincent knows Dr. Cartwright's customers, and he's never seen him before. He’s never seen the young man who walks through the sliding doors of the pharmacy, and he knows this because he knows he would have remembered.

He looks lost, hunched and searching, hands shoved in the pockets of his windbreaker as he scans the shelves of over-the-counter medication. Hair as bright and soft as the sun, blue eyes that are clouded with something like disquiet or restlessness. A man too big for his body, or for the city.

He might as well have jumped off the pages of a comic book, some scrappy underdog who secretly has heat vision and punches Nazis in his spare time. Vincent figures that a lot of who he is as a person can be explained by the few comic books he bothered to pick up as a kid, and it’s a shame that this stranger he’ll likely never see again ticks so many of those boxes.

It turns out he’s looking for a fever reducer for his mother, conflicted on the brands and the packaging and the pricing. His voice is deep, handsomely ragged, and Vincent struggles to keep his face from heating up as he helps the man make his purchase.

The smile he shoots over the register is so charming it should be illegal.

But he comes back. Not a week later, he comes back, picking up a prescription for a John Morrison, Sr., blood pressure medication with a hefty enough dosage to surely indicate an older gentleman. Gorgeous Mystery Guy looks young, probably around Vincent’s age, so it must be his father or grandfather, and _senior_ would indicate—

“You’re all set,” Vincent tells him as he wraps the pill bottle up. “Thanks, Mr. Morrison.”

The upward quirk at the corner of his mouth is as much confirmation as Vincent needs. “Yeah,” Mr. Morrison replies. “You too, Vincent.”

Someday he’ll remember that he’s wearing a nametag.

It’s odd, because it’s not like Vincent works in a coffee shop or a convenience store. There’s only so many reasons to visit a pharmacy, and yet, he returns so routinely that shooting the breeze with him becomes a habit. Vincent finds out that Mr. Morrison is funny, and awfully likable, and yes, about his age. Both students attending school on opposite sides of the city, which would explain why Vincent has never seen him before, and he also finds out, with gracious serendipity, that his first name is Jack.

Jack Morrison.

Vincent doesn't know yet what Jack will eventually become. Doesn't know that Jack will eclipse him so wholly, that Bloomington, Indiana will become a microcosm of Vincent's first real, mind-numbing love, that the world will grow to adore a Jack Morrison who is both his and... not his.

All he knows is that one day, Jack Morrison strides up to the register without the intention of buying anything.

“You like movies?” Jack asks, a lopsided smile playing on his face.

* * *

Vincent says goodbye when he goes off to war. 

There’s an anger that simmers in both of them, though they wear it very differently. It manifests itself in the same questions, though; _how could no one have seen this coming? Sentient, subjugated artificial intelligence, potent enough to kill and persecuted enough to find reason to._ Every day, there’s more death, more vigils, more calls to arms, and every day things only seem to get worse.

And Jack has never been able to face a problem without trying to fix it.

Since the day he turned eighteen, he’s been working toward it, working toward leaving Bloomington, Indiana to go off and kill himself at the end of some omnic’s gun. Vincent’s fought him about it every step and apologized twice as much, and the only consolation is that they always end up coming together again, fearful of the future and leaning on each other for a moment of peace.

“I have to go,” Jack whispers to him under a shower of starlight.

Vincent loves summer in Indiana. It’s a shame they have to sour it like this. “You don’t have to,” he murmurs, fingers sliding against Jack’s jaw, “but you’re going to.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

He contents himself, for now, in Jack’s warmth, his presence, his weight. The tangibility of someone so real, so honest, so terribly, terribly good. The heartbeat that Vincent presses his palm against is so insistent and optimistic that, if Jack really sees a light at the end of this long and bloody tunnel, then maybe Vincent can convince himself of the same.

“I love you,” he presses against Jack’s lips, just so he knows.

But it doesn’t make seeing him ship off hurt any less.

* * *

Vincent says goodbye after so many months apart. 

The program is experimental and dangerous and dubiously ethical, but the benefits Jack has reaped from it are… noticeable, to say the least. Vincent almost doesn’t recognize him when he steps onto the train platform, all corded muscle and thick chest, blue eyes bright and eager as he scans the crowd. His shoulders are back and his head is held high, and he’s so _proud._ Proud to be home as a man who’s grown, who’s made a difference, and Vincent’s throat tightens as he stutters into a sprint.

Later, between dinner and a stroll around the park and a night spent entwined with him, under him, through him, Jack will tell him about everything. His fears of their near insurmountable odds, his faith that the might and determination of the people he’s met will see them through. A number of his stories weave in some man named Gabe, about whom Vincent teases Jack mercilessly.

_Should I be worried? You sure seem to like him. What does he look like? Do you think he would let you—?_

It earns him a playful nip at the lips, a dark-eyed and hungry Jack Morrison looming over him as he’s pinned to the couch. _God_ , the SEP makes Vincent anxious, makes him wonder what witch’s concoction is being systematically pumped into these soldiers, its properties wholly unknown to them, but with his hands running over Jack’s firm shoulders, under the hem of his regulation t-shirt, he figures that its drawbacks can wait until after Jack demonstrates to him _just_ how strong and invigorated he’s become.

Jack only has two weeks. Fourteen days and then he’ll be back to training, back to this Gabe guy he seems to get on so well with, back to staring down waves of mechanized lethality, back to solving a problem the world could have avoided had it exercised even a little bit of restraint.

At the end of those fourteen days, Vincent will say goodbye more times than he can count. He’ll say it in the morning, sleep-warm and soft in the sheets with him, and in the car on the way to the train station. He’ll say it into a kiss, the shell of his ear, that golden hair. He'll try so hard to memorize how it feels to have Jack Morrison’s arms wrapped around his waist, Jack’s chest against his, Jack’s face pressing kisses into his neck. So hard that it'll nearly rip his heart in half.

But there, on the train platform in Bloomington, at the starting line of a wonderful two weeks, all Vincent can do is rush into Jack’s arms, pull him close by the nape of his neck, elation bursting forth from every corner of his body.

* * *

Vincent says goodbye when it ends. 

He’s frowning as he asks, “Strike Commander?”

“Yeah,” Jack replies, almost like he’s trying to make himself small. How could he, though? With the presence of a titan and the tails of a cobalt coat billowing behind him, how could he be anything less than a fable? “I tried to tell them that Gabe would have been a better choice, but…”

He trails off, and a long, bloated silence forms between them. Perhaps the onus is on Vincent to fill it, but he can’t. He finds he doesn’t have the capacity, the tools, the wherewithal. Questions and demands and bargains swell in his skull, but he keeps them at bay.

And Strike Commander Morrison fidgets.

“I…” Jack starts, his voice stalling awkwardly in his throat. His hand hovers in front of him, reaching out, beckoning Vincent forward, but Vincent doesn’t go. “I… I have twelve hours to report to the watchpoint in Gibraltar. I was… I was asked to square away any… um.”

“Loose ends?”

“Vincent.”

He sighs.

The thing is, he’s not surprised. Of _course_ they would have picked Jack. Jack is everything. He’s a homegrown soldier and a beautiful face, elite and quotidian, your favorite neighbor and a blinding star. The world will see Jack Morrison and see a savior, a guiding light, and Vincent will always be the one who got to see him quiet, and scared, and unsure. Vincent will always be his first comfort, his first love.

But not his life. Saving the world is Jack’s life.

“I’m not asking this to be petty,” he starts, jaw working as he stares at Jack’s lapels, his shiny Overwatch pin, anything but his face. “You said… you said that when everything was over, that you… that we would…”

Even thinking about it is too wounding. Promises whispered into his skin under the cover of dark, of futures, of eternities together, the fingers of his left hand kissed reverently like an oath. Maybe if he’d been paying attention, he would have realized that it just wasn’t possible. That Jack was trying desperately to soothe an ache that wouldn’t go away.

He still is, in some ways. “We could,” Jack says quietly. “I… I would.”

“But would I ever even see you?”

To his credit, saying nothing takes less breath than saying no.

When Vincent meets his eyes, he both is and isn’t the same. He’s not the young man in the pharmacy in Bloomington, hunting around for medicine to help his mother, but a war hero. Jack Morrison, loyal second to the famed Gabriel Reyes, scourge of the omnic uprising. Strike Commander of Overwatch. The leading man on a new global stage.

How selfish it would be for Vincent to deprive the world of him.

The goodbye comes in the form of a kiss, something chaste and warm and final. A nice memory, to be sealed away and forgotten about, and when Jack pulls away from him, Vincent knows it’ll be the last time.

He manages to smile somehow as Overwatch’s Strike Commander walks away.

* * *

Many years later, after love and light have found Vincent again and silver hairs have begun to crowd his temples, after he’s warded away his regrets, his worries, after he’s learned to ignore the news when the headlines begin tearing Overwatch limb from limb, he turns on the TV.

 ** _BREAKING: Explosion at Swiss Overwatch headquarters leaves multiple dead; Strike Commander Jack Morrison, Commander Gabriel Reyes among casualties_**  

There’s no right way to say goodbye to someone who leaves you like that.

* * *

Parts of Vincent’s life feel like a tragedy of errors.

A tragedy of missed opportunities, of words left unsaid. Of people and faces he let walk out of his life, of paths he maybe shouldn’t have taken. Vincent’s life is so painfully beautiful, so wretchedly ideal. Tonight, he’ll return home to his husband, to his daughter. They’ll eat and they’ll laugh and maybe they’ll watch a movie on the couch together, and his happiness will swallow his sorrow like it has for the last ten years.

But today, he lets himself soak in it.

He’s been to the memorial before, but only once. It dredged up such a foul bile in the back of his throat that he can barely stand to think about it now, all those flowers and those handwritten cards stacked lovingly atop a marble pedestal at the feet of a myth. He looks the same, Vincent supposes. The same square jaw, the same brave smile, the same broad chest and protective air. A giant who loved people. A colossus who wanted to see kindness and hope in a world that strangled those things.

It’s not Jack, though. It’s Strike Commander Morrison, but it’s not Jack.

The drive to Arlington is dreary and muted, the radio playing low about some robbery in Grand Mesa, some vigilante in a mask. Vincent would find himself dozing were his heart not so sore. The iron spokes of the fencing around the National Cemetery jut upward in the rain, angry and black, caging in the meticulous grid of America’s finest. Bodies that were never recovered, names that were never known.

It’s the most authentic thing Vincent has left.

The headstone is exactly how Jack would have wanted it. Not too big, not too ostentatious. No poetic epitaph or ornamental design, just his beloved title and the emblem of the cause that killed him. The lawn surrounding it is no more methodically maintained than it is around any of the other graves, and if Vincent looks down the line of them, they begin to blur together, the sleek gray steps of a maudlin staircase. Heroes and legends, but only one of whom Vincent touched, and loved, and let go.

He doesn’t care that the ground is wet when he stoops to sit. Shoulders slumped and breath catching in his throat, he twirls blades of grass between his fingertips.

“Hi, Jack.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you very much for reading!! i may not reply to comments bc i'm very nervous but i tell you WHAT if you comment i will see it and i will love you until my soul burns up in the stratosphere


End file.
